E-commerce has got a long way in the last few years, and it is here to stay for some time with its ecommerce innovations. Supported by the fact that it’s growing at an annual rate of 23%, there’s still enormous potential in store for this virtual business. This year’s stats alone have shown favorable results for online purchases. For example, 67% of Millennials and 56% of Gen Xers would rather buy stuff online instead of visiting an actual store. Moreover, they spend around six hours per week on their online shopping sprees. It’s no wonder then that the previous year was so heavily marked by many interesting ecommerce trends. Drop shipping for one has seen an increase in use, which will likely result in a boost of e-commerce businesses, that are holding more than fifty thousand goods in the store, next year. Stable e-commerce platforms, such as Magento, will prove invaluable for such endeavors. So, here’s a list of four e-commerce trends among ecommerce innovations you should be on the lookout for.

Ecommerce innovations #1: A rise in mobile and multichannel shopping

Seeing people reaching out for their mobile phones, whilst in the middle of a store, to check for relevant information online regarding a particular product that they’re interested in is not an uncommon sight. In fact, such practices are on the rise as people are spending approximately four hours per day on their mobile phones. This is why shops will most likely invest more money into improving their users’ multichannel experiences, as well as producing more digital content for them to read. As a result, new marketing strategies will need to integrate physical shopping with e-commerce and vice versa. Amazon Go is an example of one such crossover is one of the ecommerce innovations, where customers can purchase goods in a physical store all by themselves effectively cutting out the middleman, that is, a cashier. This is made possible by the use of high-tech computer sensor vision which allows customers to pick up the goods they need and simply walk out of the store without having to wait in line. Likewise, we’ll see more of this in near future, as both computer and smartphone technology just keep evolving.

Ecommerce innovations #2: Mobile-friendly designs for better CRO

According to some estimates, smartphones encompassed 60% of all the visits to e-commerce sites recently. Despite this, e-commerce sites had low conversion rates and high cart abandonment rates coming from mobile phone users, due to the fact that many of them initially search for these products on their phones, only to go to their laptops and computers to finish the purchase. Therefore, businesses will need to design their online stores to be more mobile-friendly for their on-the-go consumers. Open-source platforms, such as Magento, are highly adaptable and could be the answer to this problem. They support custom designs, multiple stores, as well as the integration of any third-party components. This is why you should consider using this platform if you haven’t done it so far. Just make sure you have a skilled magento support team to back you up as this platform is considered to be one of the most difficult ones to code for.

Ecommerce innovations #3: Focus on UGC and social media interaction

From the aspect of ecommerce innovations, user-generated content is not just an excellent way of minimizing your online marketing expenses; it also serves as a means of effectively increasing your brand awareness. Namely, we already know the importance of social media for e-commerce marketing, yet people are oversaturated with marketing campaigns that they’re starting to ignore them a lot more than before, and this will only get worse by this current situation. That’s where user-generated content comes in handy. By interacting with your customers in the form of likes and shares on their posts that mention your products, you’re linking powerful testimonials about your product to a much wider audience. These testimonials are a more reliable way of promoting products than direct branding campaigns, as they come from the product users and not your business. So, companies that work on improving their social media engagement will have an easier time in the closest moments.

Ecommerce innovations #4: VR and AR will shape the future of e-commerce

VR and AR are just great ecommerce innovations undoubtedly. Finally, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality might forever change how we do business shortly. Ways of utilizing this innovative technology were already one of the biggest trends last year, which left us with high hopes for the following year. Just imagine, VR and AR could make e-commerce so popular that physical stores would become obsolete. By using this technology, we lower the amount of time necessary to create physical stores and facilities, saving a lot of energy in the process. There would be no staff in these stores, thus making merchandise somewhat cheaper and more accessible to everyone at any time. For now, this is more fiction than science, but who knows what the next year might bring?

In conclusion, e-commerce is gaining a lot of momentum thanks to certain technological breakthroughs we had so far. Likewise, as we’re getting more accustomed to the previous technologies, we’re opening the door for new ones on the horizon. Definitely, any ecommerce marketing agency can investigate any business and make it more profitable.

Author Bio:

Oscar Waterworth – a digital nomad, writer and senior editor at Technivorz. By working with product development teams for nearly a decade now, he has gained a great deal of insight on remote team management and project operations in the startup sphere. An avid gamer and gadget enthusiast.